“I don’t want any of that,” Emma said flatly, staring into the box. She felt a strong aversion to having Graham’s things in her possession, and the strength of the feeling surprised her. She wondered, for a moment, how Gold had come to have these items, but asking questions meant continuing to discuss Graham. She couldn’t do that right now.
“No?” Gold said casually. “How about these?’ He pulled two walkie-talkies from the box. “These seem to be police-issued. You don’t have use for them? Couldn’t your boy play with them, at least?”
Emma sighed and took the two walkie-talkies. “Fine,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Children grow up so fast,” said Gold. “You’ll want to make as many memories as you can.”
Emma looked at him. He was making that same face—something between compassionate and devious.
“Don’t I know it,” she said.
• • •
Emma found Henry sitting in his “castle” at the seashore. It was only thirty minutes before school and he was in a glum mood; he didn’t seem all that cheered up by the walkie-talkies, and he eventually just stuffed them into his backpack. She suggested they could use them to continue their Operation Cobra work, but he only looked back out at the water when she mentioned it. What had once brought a mischievous energy to his eyes now had almost no effect.
“What’s wrong?” she said, after a silence.
“I feel like we should stop Operation Cobra,” Henry said. “It seemed really fun. But now Sheriff Graham is dead.”
“That had nothing at all to do with you or the curse. He had a sick heart. He’d known for a long time.”
Henry turned and looked at her with grave seriousness. “That’s not what happened,” he said. “The Queen killed him because you two were falling in love and he was her slave. And she was mad.”
“I know you think that, but sometimes bad things just happen for no reason.”
“That’s not true, either,” he said, growing more agitated. “She killed him because he was good, and good always loses here. And you’re good, and that means you’re going to lose.”
“Good doesn’t always lose,” Emma said. “It’s just harder for good. Because good plays by more rules.”
Henry seemed vaguely interested in this point, even though he still remained distracted, disconnected. “Good has to play fair,” he said.
“You have to get it out of your head that Regina killed somebody,” Emma said. “She didn’t. That’s not fair to her.”
Henry smiled.
“What?” Emma said.
“You’re right,” he said. “We don’t want to make her any angrier than she is already. Right?”
Emma cocked her head. “That’s not what I meant, kid.”
“I know,” Henry said. “But still.”
• • •
She dropped Henry at school, then went back to the station, ready for another long day of… very little.
When she came in, her eyes went to Graham’s desk as they always did. His badge was still there. Emma imagined herself with it, imagined changing her life in this way, settling in. She went to the desk and picked the badge up.
“You won’t be needing that.”
Emma turned.
Regina, arms crossed, stood in the doorway.
“The position automatically falls to me tomorrow,” Emma said. “Have I misunderstood the charter?”
“It automatically falls to you if the mayor fails to appoint somebody else,” Regina said, strolling into the room, looking disdainfully at the mess on Emma’s desk. “I’m going to appoint someone else this afternoon.”
“Who?” Emma said.
“Sidney Glass from the Storybrooke Daily Mirror,” she said casually. “He knows the town well. He’s been here for quite some time.”
“A reporter?” Emma said. “He’s not qualified.”
“Oh, I think he’ll be just fine,” Regina said, smiling. “And it’ll be a pleasure to have somebody here who is not actively working to undermine me.”
“Graham picked me for a reason, Regina,” Emma said. “I know you don’t like it, but he did.”
“Yes, a reason,” she said. “He wanted to sleep with you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” Regina said. When Emma could think of nothing to say in response, Regina continued: “Either way, it’s time for us to make a clean break. You and I both know it’s inappropriate for you to be employed by the town. You’ll have to find some other work.”
“What are you saying?” Emma asked.
“I’m saying,” said Regina, taking Graham’s badge from her hands, “that you’re fired.”
• • •
Emma went straight to Gold. There was something about his behavior earlier that gave her a hunch that he’d be interested in helping. He wasn’t being friendly—he didn’t have it in him to be friendly. Gold wanted her to be sheriff.
At his shop, Emma told him what Regina had done, and he nodded. This was all some kind of chess game to him, wasn’t it?
“She’s almost right,” he said, pulling a document from a cabinet behind his desk. It was old and dusty. He held it up. “The town charter,” he said with a grin. He laid it out on the counter. “Let me show you how she’s wrong.”
Regina called a press conference in her office later that morning, to announce the hiring of Sidney Glass as the town’s new sheriff.
Glass, of course, was beaming for the cameras, thrilled at this promotion, always so eager to do the bidding of his beloved mayor. Emma couldn’t stand that guy.
But it wasn’t so simple, as Gold had pointed out. She stood and watched Regina’s haughty press conference for only a minute or two before she decided to make her move.
When she strode into the office, even Regina looked surprised.
“This isn’t set,” Emma said. “She can’t appoint him. We have to have an election. And I’m running.”
“The mayor is entitled to—”
“She isn’t,” Emma said calmly, holding up her printout of the charter. She’d highlighted the relevant passage. “She can put a candidate forward, but there has to be an election.”
“Fine, Ms. Swan,” said Regina, not bothering to take the charter. “We’ll go through with the formalities. And the candidate I’ve nominated, Mr. Sidney Glass, will then be the new sheriff.” Sidney Glass, for his part, looked flummoxed by all this, but he kept up his smile for the cameras. “How’s that?” Regina said.
“Perfect,” said Emma.
The cameras all turned to her.
• • •
A few hours after she’d rained on Regina’s parade, Emma was on patrol, on foot, when she walked by the diner and saw Henry through the window. He was at a booth, alone. She smiled, seeing him there, reading what she assumed was his book of stories. But when she went inside, she realized that he was reading the newspaper, not his book.
“Studying up on current events?”
Henry looked up, and Emma could see that he was very worried.
“What is it?”
“You haven’t seen it, have you?”
She sat down in the booth and pulled the paper across the table. Her old mug shot—the one Graham had taken, and she felt a twinge of sadness as the tiny memory flitted through her mind like a little bird—but the headline was new. It read: ex-jailbird emma swan birthed babe behind bars.
Emma stiffened, sat upright, and picked up the paper. “How did they do this so fast?” she muttered, scanning. The article—written by Sidney Glass—included all the details of her “possession of stolen goods” incident. Which was impossible. Or should have been impossible, anyway.
“Is it true?” Henry asked quietly. “Was I born in jail?”
She looked at him over the paper and then set it down. “It is true,” she said, “but it’s complicated. I didn’t want you to know because I didn’t think that it mattered.” She sighed, picked up the paper, twisted it up. “Let’s chuck
this. Come on. Let’s go out to your castle.”
“It’s the same thing again,” Henry said. “Evil wins because it doesn’t have to play fair. You can’t just throw it away. It already ruined your election.”
“Nothing’s ruined,” she said. “We’ll just have to adjust.” She reached across the table, took his hand. Remembering her conversation at the pawnshop, she said, “Besides, I have a new ally. Mr. Gold.”
“Him?” Henry said, his eyes alight. “He’s worse than her.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Emma said. “And besides, he has some good ideas.”
But Henry was inconsolable, and he retreated into himself as she tried to cheer him up. In the end he crossed his arms and shook his head. “Good never wins,” he said again. “It just doesn’t.” He took a breath and looked up at her. “It’s like with Rumplestiltskin and his son.”
Emma squinted. “Rumplestiltskin? The Gold guy? He didn’t have a son.”
Henry rolled his eyes. “His son is only like the most important thing in his life.”
“Is he?” Emma said, remembering what Archie had told her weeks ago: It’s his language. “I didn’t know that.”
“He was this huge coward, before he got magic. He was like the laughingstock of his whole village. Except his son, Baelfire, really loved him and didn’t care.”
Henry then told Emma the story of how Rumplestiltskin first gained power, after his hubris led him to be tricked by a wizard named Zoso, locked in a curse that had tormented him for decades. Zoso tricked Rumplestiltskin into taking the curse onto himself. It gave him powerful magic, but it interfered with his ability to feel, his ability to be human. And it made his son, Bae, fear him instead of love him.
“That’s sort of horrible,” Emma said, wondering what Henry might be trying to communicate with this particular story. She wondered if it had something to do with her new role as sheriff.
“You’re right,” Henry said. “And the worst part is, it’s just another story where good loses. Zoso is the bad guy and he wins.”
“Seems sort of like Rumplestiltskin is the bad guy, though,” Emma said.
“Yeah,” Henry said. “I know. But he didn’t used to be.”
• • •
Emma fumed for the rest of the afternoon and decided, after she’d closed up the office, that she had to say something to Regina.
She’d seen the paper all over town and knew everyone was reading it. And her anger wasn’t about the election or the smear campaign, not really. It was that Henry now knew something she hadn’t wanted him to know, and no one—not Regina, not Sidney Glass, not anyone—had the right to tell her secrets.
She went to Town Hall. The light was on in Regina’s upstairs office, where she’d been earlier in the day, and Emma stormed in without knocking.
Regina, startled, gasped when she looked up from her paperwork.
“Those were juvie records,” Emma said. “You had no right. I know you want Sidney to win, but you had no right.”
“It’s far easier to win public elections when you haven’t been to jail, Ms. Swan. I think the people deserve to know who they’re getting for a sheriff, don’t you? It’s about Henry also. He should know the truth, too. Shouldn’t he?” Emma said nothing. Regina, already bored with the conversation, returned to her paperwork. “Besides, you can discuss this during the debate and clear up any inaccuracies. How does that sound?”
“What debate?”
Regina stood and put a few folders into her briefcase. “The debate. It’s tomorrow.” She smiled curtly, straightened her suit, and strode past Emma and out of the office.
Emma followed. “Nice to know that,” she said.
“You and Sidney can bicker for as long as you want,” Regina said. “The truth will come out eventually, it always does. Maybe the town will even get to hear about who you’re in bed with for this campaign. That would be interesting.” They were at the back stairwell now. Regina opened the door, and the two women went down the steps. When they came to the first-floor landing, Regina stopped and said, “Don’t you think they should know about you and Gold?” She reached for the door.
“I’m not in bed with anyone,” Emma said. “I’m fighting fire with—”
Regina cried out before she could finish.
A wall of flame had greeted Regina as she pulled open the door, sending her backward into Emma, then to the ground. She fell hard against the stairs they’d just come down, and Emma, holding the railing for balance and holding her other arm up to protect her face from the heat, looked down and saw that Regina was holding her ankle. We’re both gonna burn up in here, Emma thought, but she put the thought out of her mind and knelt down beside Regina. “Come on,” she said.
“I can’t walk,” Regina said, eyeing the flames behind Emma. “The whole building is on fire.” She locked eyes with Emma. “You have to—you have to get me out of here.”
Emma, not one to hesitate, got up, and burst into the burning lobby of Town Hall, found a fire extinguisher, and started blowing frosted foam around herself and the doorway to the stairs, creating a pathway that would lead them both to safety.
She went back for Regina then, and she swore, before picking her up into her arms, that Regina seemed surprised that she’d returned. What does she think, I would leave her? Emma wondered, hoisting her rival into her arms. She carried her carefully through the burning lobby, sticking close to the path she’d sprayed.
Emma kicked open the door and saw police cars, fire trucks, and reporters clustered together in the circular driveway, all of them wide-eyed at the image before them: The sheriff, coated in soot and sweat, carrying the mayor out of a burning building.
The cameras all began to flash and snap.
“Put me down,” Regina said. “Put me down.”
EMTs rushed to them as Emma gently lowered Regina to the ground, panting as she did so. “You’re complaining about how I saved your life?”
“I seriously doubt you saved my life,” Regina said, pushing an oxygen mask away, scowling. “Where is Sidney?” she cried. Then, to Emma: “I doubt there was much danger.”
Emma shook her head, stood, and stepped back as the authorities tended to their mayor.
There was no winning with this woman.
• • •
Emma talked with the firefighters for some time after they’d hauled Regina away to the hospital and put out the fire. Something didn’t feel right about any of it. A coincidental fire? When the two of them were there? And after she spent a few minutes snooping around in the debris, she knew exactly why it didn’t feel right. When she found the rag, she headed straight for Gold’s pawnshop.
“You started it,” she said to him, slamming the rag down on his desk. “I can smell your lanolin.”
Gold looked up, a careful smile on his face. “I have been here all night,” he said. “I did no such thing.” He glanced at the rag. “I admit there’s a chemical smell. But there are a lot of chemical smells. Chemicals burn, often.”
“I don’t want to win like this,” Emma said. “Is this what it means to have an alliance with you? Breaking the rules? It’s not who I am.”
“Who you are,” said Gold, “is somebody who will be a real sheriff for this town, not a shill. That makes you better.” Emma had nothing to say to this, and so Gold continued: “Are you ready for the debate tomorrow?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“Sidney Glass is slippery, I’m sure he will be ready. I’d advise you to come prepared.”
• • •
The picture of emma carrying Regina from the burning building was on the cover of the Storybrooke Daily Mirror the next morning, and all day, the town was abuzz with the news. Emma didn’t mind the positivity and the confidence, but Gold’s role in the whole thing gnawed at her all day, even as her friends—Ruby, Granny, Mary Margaret, Henry, Archie, and others—went about the business of last-minute stumping. Emma reconnected with Mary Margaret about thirty minute
s before the debate, and the two of them walked to the library together.
“You’re going to win,” Mary Margaret said. “I can feel it. And with the picture?”
It was one positive comment too many, and Emma broke down and told Mary Margaret her suspicions about Gold’s participation in the fire. Mary Margaret listened to the story, then was quiet for a long moment. As they approached the library, they joined together with the assembling crowds. It seemed as though all of Storybrooke was there to hear the debate.
“What kind of message would it send to Henry?” Emma said, the two of them climbing the stairs. “To win like that?”
“Would he ever know?”
“But that would mean lying to him,” Emma said.
“But telling the truth might lead to you losing.”
“I guess that’s just a risk I’ll have to take.”
Mary Margaret nodded at this. “There it is, then,” she said.
“There it is.”
• • •
When it came time for Emma to speak, she still wasn’t sure what she was going to say. Sidney had given boilerplate answers and taken the safe route with all of Archie’s questions. The audience seemed to respond positively. Based only on the energy of the applause, Emma knew, as she walked out onto the stage, that she could ride the “hero” wave all the way to the win.
But it didn’t take much time out in front of the audience—the entire town, really—before she heard Mary Margaret’s simple words: There it is. Sometimes things weren’t all that complicated. We just make them complicated in order to hide from them.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Emma said, partway through an answer she was giving about her thoughts on the local noise ordinance. She looked down at the first row and saw Henry, bright-eyed, smiling up at her. “I have to back up. I have to say something about the recent fire.”
The crowd went still. Emma didn’t know if she was about to make a big mistake, but she knew she had to do it.